José Iges & Concha Jerez - El Diario De Jonás -1997- (CD, Unió Musics), Spain

 

To bring in some music from other realms I think it's nice to start this blog-year off with a longer piece of music that creates a different listening experience than let's say a cassette compilation.  

El Diario De Jonás was a multi-disciplinary soundwork from 90's Spain that was written and imagined by the artists, scholars and music composers José Iges and Concha Jerez. At the end of the 80's they started collaborating on a series of projects called "Media Interference" that were combinations of audiovisual pieces, crossmedia concerts and performances. 

In line with these artworks the piece El Diario De Jonás was created in the 90's with contemporary experimental musicians Belma Martín (voice), Pilar Subirá (percussion) and Pedro López (live electronics). Martín and López were founders of the Madrilenian CEDI Institute for improvisation and sound-research and published a magazine on music called Hurly Burly during the 90's. The musicians also released music on the Spanish Modisti label that tried to operate on the intersection of music theory, politics and free music expression.

El Diario De Jonás was recorded live on 27-9-97 at Las Cuevas de Canelobre (caves of Canelobre) in Busot, Alicante as part of the 13th International Festival of Contemporary Music of Alicante. The release was supported by the Counsel of Mallorca. Partially performance, partially soundscape and partially sound-poetry (in Spanish and French) El Diario De Jonás is an interesting piece of Spanish music from the 90's. It reminds me a bit of the Galvana album by Victor Nubla and Pelayo Fernandez Arrizabalaga from 1992. 

From the liner notes:

"This work is shaped as a personal diary developed on internalized fragments. For that it's integrated by different episodes, linked from a certain subjectivity than the "diary" gender always suggests. Likewise, the understanding, the inverted commas or underlined, the monologue truncated on a word or the design or the linguistic gesture takes part of the expressive strategies of the piece. Making it we have gone to the bottom of our memories, on a time of speed and forgetfulness. As a Diary, its structure is given rather from the physical support -the diary- and from the graphy of the person that writes it. {..} The work is developed with three musicians performing live - a singer, an acoustic percussionist and an electronic percussionist, plus organized sound taped on 4 sources. All the material for the interpreters arised from 40 sentences, memories expressed orally, 20 coming from each one of the two authors. Different types of visual, phonetical and even semiotical interpretations of the sentences generated the ways in which the piece was performed. The modular apect assured that it would sound mainly the same during each performance yet always differ and show unprevisible elements." 

Due to the nature of this release no download link yet.

Various Artists - Canada - Italy / Italia - Canada -1987- (LP, 3ViTrePAIR)

This is an interesting sound-poetry record I found in Italy not too long ago. It came out on the wonderful 3ViTrePAIR label that was founded by Enzo Minarelli, an Italian artist and sound-poet that played a protagonist role in gathering sound-poetry artists on different compilations and hosting poetry festivals during the 80's. He created compilation series around his concept of Polipoesia, that was based upon a manifest on poetry he created. The series were each dedicated to the poetry exchange between different countries. Here we have the compilation that focused on sound poetry from Canada and Italy.

The Canadian poets on the compilation are all from Quebec so the main language used here is French, hence the references to Antonin Artaud the French dramatist and subversive theatre director who also did strange recordings on radio that could be seen as sound poetry to a certain extent. In the liner notes written by Minarelli references are also made to French poets like Henri Chopin and Bernard Heidsieck. The Canadian representatives on this compilation are Pierre-André Arcand, Jean-Claude Gagnon, Alain-Martin Richard, Richard Martel and Gilles Arteau. The poets from Italy are aside from Minarelli himself Gian Paolo Roffi, Corrado Cicciarelli, Massimo Mori and Luigi Pasotelli. Sound poetry has always been important in Italy and this series is another strong example.

The music ranges from sound experiments to casiotone rhythm minimalism to the use of mouth harps, voice manipulation and more. It gives a mail-art music feeling from back in those days that can be experienced on compilation series like the VEC Audio Exchange for example. Here are some contextual words from the liner notes:

It seems, today, after a great deal of sound poetry is touching the limits of the extremest noise, denying value to the word, almost atomized, if not disapeared because it has been reduced to non-significant sound, the thread of the word is taken up again, proposing it in its natural shape. [sic.] Such a return to and into the word can also be explained as a return to a more immediate communication, to a listening pleasure, keeping in the right side the needs of the audience in a theatre or in front of a TV. The authors herewith included prove and point out how the sound experimentation is no longer synonym of ambiguity of communication, but is still possible practising sound experimentation with intelligent grace and refined, oral taste. In a word, more harmony, less disharmony. So, sound poetry is, or can be for those who want to understand, the next step of certain written poetry, at least the right entry door to continue into the oral a process of invention that in the written field it's no longer original and it is still into the most stagnant impasse. - Enzo Minarelli

Get it HERE / Mirror Link

Various Artists - Views Beside... -1982- (7 Inch EP, Ed. Vogelsang), Germany

This is a rare artists' 7 Inch that accompanied an art book edited by Fritz Balthaus, published by Ed. Vogelsang in Berlin in 1982. Unfortunately I don't have the book, but according to information online it was an anthology assembling contributions by numerous artists: texts, photos, collages, drawings, an object (a pencil), and the six audio pieces on the 7", which was housed in a generic inner sleeve attached to the inside of the back cover of the book.

It's another nice example of the music experiments that were going on in the West-Berlin art scene and the galleries of the time in which there was dialogue, overlap (or colission as you wish) between the art academies and more established art world with the DIY underground of the time. Neue Deutsche Welle music and its performance aspects balanced on these two fringes, because of the often conceptual nature in the artistic approach. You can find certain examples of this in Berliner bands like Die Tödliche Doris, the whole Geniale Dilletanten happening in Berlin's Tempodrom in 1981 or the Berlin Super 8 DIY art-films that were being made by local experimental musicians and artists. On a sidenote, these type of happenings and musical output also took place in East-Berlin and other GDR cities like Dresden and Leipzig. There is a nice documentary in German about that here. These expressions were much more marginal and obviously not tolerated by the regime so at times quite dangerous for the artists in their practices.

On this little record there are various artists compiled from Berlin as well as foreign places: the first piece is made by Florence born Italian visual artist Maurizio Nanucci, who started to work with neon typography in the late 60's. His work deals with the relation between his research on linguistics and the visual experience of colours.

Then there is Berlin artist and writer Thomas Kapielski who also worked a lot with the important experimental musician Frieder Butzmann in the 80's. Kapielski is still active to this day. Also Fritz Balthaus is present, an artist that in his work dealt a lot with the mediation between architecture and design in (public) spaces. American composer Beth Anderson is compiled with a nice track that is also the most poppy on the record.

Lastly there is a piece by conceptual visual artist Rolf Julius based on a reel-to-reel voice cut-up of American female voice experimentalist Joan La Barbara and a piece by Fred Szymanski of the great New York band Ike Yard, which was the only band from the US to be featured on the Factory Records roster during the 80's.

Some nice sound-art pieces from Berlin's past.

Get it HERE

Various Artists - Music From The White House Vol. 4: France -1984- (Tape, Exart 032), France/Netherlands

Music From The White House was a series of compilations on the cult home-taping label Exart from The Netherlands that was created by Hessel Veldman aka Y Create (also in Gorgonzola Legs) and his wife Nick Nicole. The compilations were made around different countries: Holland, England, France and the United States.

On Music From The White House Vol. 4: France only home-taping acts are compiled from the French 80's underground. Amongst others present is the experimental noise of Brume, the Artaud and De Sade inspired sounds of vulgarity by Suckdog affiliate Costes and the improvisation of Klimperei and La Sonorité Jaune. Furthermore there are some French lo-fi synth-punk tracks by the Dirty Husbands, Cripure S.A. and Hermaphrodisiak which all remind me of Kas Product. Lastly there is a minimal synth track by DZ Lectric and Anton Shield and some miscellaneous home-taping tracks throughout the whole compilation.

Another nice compilation from the 80's containing some better and some worse tracks that display the uncompromising home-taping spirit of the time in the context of transnational music exchange. The Exart label on which this was published functioned as one of the key cassette labels of The Netherlands in terms of home-taping distribution. Soon I will upload the Music From The White House: USA cassette as well.

This cassette was kindly donated to the blog by Hessel Veldman/Y Create.

Get it HERE



Message:
Crazy enough, I've got Archaic Inventions mapped out for at least a whole year: if not longer. The amount of never heard material and new content is vast, mind-blowing and extends into many different musical genres. Also I am working hard on establishing the upcoming record label simultaneously with various sound-art and podcast projects. Furthermore I'm developing a live-set of my own music that will see the light this summer.

The digitization process demands time and I have to balance all these different projects. I'll try to do the best I can to keep up the consistency of the blog, but there will be moments which will demand prioritizing my attention to one of these directions. Thanks to all supporting the blog (some of you since many years)! Lots of stuff still to come! - Bence AI